In upholstery, and particularly for securing upholstery to vehicle seats, ties are used which are fitted to the seat structure and which provide for holding the upholstery firmly against the seat padding on the structure. The upholstery of cushions defining the seat portion of vehicle seats is fastened using ties comprising a portion of wire of a predetermined length and fitted at opposite ends with two heads adjustably connectable to each other; the wire is inserted manually inside a tubular sleeve defined by a folded stitched edge of the upholstery material, and the two heads are connected to each other so as to tension the tie and stretch the upholstery material firmly onto the padding.
Manually inserting the wire inside the tubular sleeve defining the wire seat on the upholstery material is obviously a painstaking, time-consuming job, which also affects the health of assembly workers (that is, such operations, can result in cramps tendonitis, and the like). One solution proposed to eliminate this drawback is to use a tie integrated directly in the upholstery material, which is defined by the wire complete with the two heads, and which is stitched directly to the edge of the cushion and/or seatback upholstery material by a special stitching process enabling subsequent tensioning of the tie. However, besides being extremely expensive, such a solution also involves the use of bulky special-purpose equipment.